The Last Trade E057: Embracing Bitcoin with Former Schwab Executive Rich Kerr

Brian Cubellis (00:01.932) gentlemen, it feels like it's been a month since we last recorded we we booked up a bunch of recordings and sent them out over and around the Fourth of July holiday. It's great to be sitting back down with all of you. good to be back in the swing of things. Marty, you look a little tanner a little a little more in tune with the ocean. You haven't been wearing shoes on my little village by the sea. I've been walking, grounding, getting sun. My wife Marty. Marty's summer Twitter is great because you get to like be with him daily and hear about the put or it's between that and the bent. I got your like workout regimen with like 10 blocks and 20 push -ups and some squats. It's very nice to be alongside you even though you're across the country. I'm telling you guys it's a great 80 to 90 minute workout. You walk down to the beach, the sun's rising over the East Coast. You walk a little bit. I'm a big walker. I've incorporated some wind sprints into it too actually. I read the stat that 95 % of men after they reach age of 33 will never sprint again in their life. And I don't want to be one of those. I want to make sure that I'm sprinting still. Wow. You got to be strong. You got to be virile if we're going to take on the mantle of making sure that Bitcoin succeeds both physically and mentally. That's right. is kind of inspiring stat. Yeah, you don't want to be in that group. Yeah. but yeah, we got a lot of catch up on it. think first things first, rich, this is your second time on the show. your first time was in another capacity and now it's in a new capacity. You've joined the team at on ramp. So, Michael, I don't know if you want to intro, bringing rich on and then rich can, can riff on that. Yeah. We're incredibly excited and excited to get back to, like you said, it was feeling, it felt a weird dusting the cobwebs off. think this was the first time two weeks we didn't record. So. excited to chat again and yeah, introduce Rich as the new president of managed wealth at OnRamp. Rich's incredible experience we talked about on the last episode and he'll talk more about it. Close to 35 years at Charles Schwab, really building out that practice and the aim here at OnRamp is really to bridge that gap between TradFi and Bitcoin and couldn't think of a better person to come on to help us do that. So super excited to have him. Yeah, Michael's too kind. He likes to age me a Brian Cubellis (02:29.838) I was 30 plus years at I'm old, but not that old. But I'm delighted to join the entire OnRamp team. I'm blown away with the intelligence inside of this group and the innovation and everything that OnRamp is trying to solve for to advance Bitcoin into the ethos and get everybody on board to protect themselves and their families. and potentially find a better way to store value of their assets and their hard labor. And so to me, working with a group that has such great purpose and have innovative products and solutions that meet the needs of the individual investor, but at the same point in time, the institutional side of the equation. And I think we're going to chop up some of that today and talk a about the various intermediaries and the progress that they're making. But that being said, I couldn't be more delighted to work with this group. It gives me such great energy and I'm looking forward to collaborating with advisors, family offices, and individuals and institutions in any way I can to help them see a better path forward with the fruits Yeah. One thing Marty was saying I'm really excited about is, there's only so many hours in the day. So we get to catch up obviously, but we never get to get super deep in the weeds. And so this weekly conversation lets us do some of that. And, Rich has been having so many conversations that I can't wait for us all to discuss because I know there's just a lot happening in this space and everybody's paying attention to the industry and what's happening. They're just trying to figure out like, what is the plan? So like really looking forward to this conversation. Yeah. And with that mind, we're going to Brian Cubellis (04:30.542) some topical news before we dive into the meat and the conversation around what's going on behind the scenes of the wealth management world as it pertains to Bitcoin. we've had a few headlines come out in the last 24 hours that we wanted to touch on. I think we'll start with the inflation print today that came in around 3%, which was below expectations. And at the same time, as Logan just flashed up on the screen, we had Bank of Japan intervene in yen markets. The timing of this was interesting, almost seemed like the Bank of Japan had some inside knowledge into what the inflation print would be here in the US. So as you can see, was floating upwards towards 162. This morning, the bank and intervene currently sitting around 158 .57. And I think the thesis behind this is with the low inflation print coming in below expectations that is signaling to the markets that the Fed may be able to take their foot off the gas pedal in terms of their restrictive monetary policy that they've been putting forth over the last couple of years. so, Jesse, throw to you. What are your thoughts, number one, on the inflation print and this Japanese difference of the yen? Yeah, I immediately go to it's been interesting how they told like two years ago, that it would be higher for longer. And nobody believed it. I didn't believe it because how can you do, how can you put so much stress on the system, especially when we have such high national debt and you you're going to start to incur now we're at a trillion dollars in annual interest expense on the national debt. It just seems so unsustainable. And yet they managed to pull it off for a couple of years now, but It's always been unsustainable to keep on that path because you can't just keep blowing out the deficits like this with the interest expense rising as that debt rolls over to new contracts at these current interest rates. And so that has to end. And maybe this is the beginning of the messaging. All right, now we're going to take our foot off the gas pedal in terms of restrictions. Brian Cubellis (06:55.462) And yeah, you know, I suppose after waiting for this for two years without it happening, I'm now incredulous that it's actually about to happen. But I think it is probably them earnestly messaging that signaling in advance that this is going to happen so that it's not a surprise to markets. But then, of course, it comes back to what assets do you want to be in in a time when they're implementing monetary policy and I think crypto Bitcoin in particular will do exceptionally well in that new environment. Yeah, I think we saw gold rally this morning on the inflation print in the moves out of Japan. But in the context of Japan, Logan, if you want to pull up that tweet, our good friend, Gary Broad, hopped in, scroll up a little bit, Logan there to comment The Bank of Japan's move every time they do this, it moves the exchange rate for 24 to 48 hours because it doesn't affect the underlying problem. The end keeps sliding post -intervention. I suppose the Japanese government has enough dry powder to keep trying this, but it's not an unlimited amount. then Lin responded, not unlimited, but making good points here. Number one, they can periodically break up short leverage to introduce two way risks, slow down the exchange rate decline and potentially hold off until the Fed begins trimming rates. So in terms of manufacturing a somewhat soft landing. And I think this would actually tie into Tom Malongo's theory that the Bank of Japan and the Fed have been working in concert to sort of manage the health of each other's monetary systems. It seems like low inflation print came in by the drastic move that the Bank of Japan made. They may have had some insider knowledge that this print was coming, reacted rather quickly, and who knows what will happen next month. at the FOMC meeting, because I believe they take off in July or they take off in September. It may be, or August, excuse me. We actually may have to wait till September. I could be wrong there though, but we do have some time between now and the next Fed meeting when we'll hear about posturing in a hawkish or dovish fashion. From what I understand earlier this week, Jerome Powell was on the Hill and it was a rather dovish meeting. Brian Cubellis (09:23.906) So what do we think? Have we solved inflation, gentlemen? I don't think so. Yeah, I think the goalposts are moving on that already have been. You know, the pattern from the 70s was you beat back inflation and then you relax on that sort of the austere policies that helped do that. But you never get inflation back to zero or negative, which is what, you know, it really would have to do if you're going stabilize and return prices to where they were at any prior moment in time. And then once you relax that austerity, the high interest rate policies, well, you've allowed the market to run again and then pricing to creep up again and people to take on more debt. And that's money creation and the M2 increases. And now you've created the conditions for more inflation. The economy is hotter. There's more money in system. And guess what? You have a next wave of inflation. That's what happened in the 70s. I think that's human nature. And I think it's just kind of how these systems work. It's a classic bullwhip effect. And so that's my base case for what's coming over the next five years. Yeah, I know you asked rhetorically, but There's structurally no bid for all these assets that historically had bid at a lower interest rate, which is the housing is the one that comes to mind or just real estate in general. like real estate, and I forget what the clip was, but real estate, we all know a lot of markets is softening, but the natural version of it being inflated, which would signal that there has to be some kind of, I'm to say collapse, but there's going to Brian Cubellis (11:20.93) Somebody's gonna have to step in because there's too much debt and there's not enough dollars. And so if interest rates have increased, we talk about like write downs across various portfolios, whether it's real estate or other financial products, somebody has to step in and provide liquidity or that system starts to collapse wherever it exists. So if inflation is already persistent and we know what happens as interest rates rise, that there's gonna be structurally less demand for whatever the financial product, you're gonna have to introduce more dollars. So it's just a matter of And we consistently see this. there's no way to solve for inflation. No, I think I agree. It was a rhetorical question. think inflation has been solved, but I do think the government has a good way of manipulating this data. And so it wouldn't shock me in the least bit if the CPI print is a bit manipulated at the end of the day. And another stat that they like to manipulate is jobs data. I mean, the big trend the last couple of years has been this downward revision of the jobs data. months after the numbers are posted, people really don't pay attention to the revisions, but the job market is not as strong as it's been marketed over the last couple of years. And to your point about real estate, Michael, it seems like that's another obvious sector of the economy where the data is being manipulated. Logan, if you want to pull up the tweet that I just put in the chat, but if you look at the data that's coming from home building, you have a 30 % drop in home building, but there's zero change in employment of residential construction workers. And that simply just does not compute. Like if you have home building dropping by 30%, the construction workers are sort of contract for hire in a lot of cases. And it would make sense that they would, their jobs numbers would be decreasing, but the data is not showing that. And so you have a disconnection between reality of what's actually being built and the data that's being reported in terms of the number of people. that are working on that. then on top of that, of course, we have the fact that a lot of the jobs growth that has happened in the last couple of years has been predominantly driven by government workers and health care, which are at this point quasi government workers since it's highly subsidized. Well, and I think to the point of it, it was rhetorical, but I think most people agree that listen as Potter Bitcoiners that maybe we structurally stop at inflation or we stay at par at whatever we agree to today. Call it five to 15 percent real. Brian Cubellis (13:45.029) I was going to basically say it's only going to increase, is like the thing that everybody has to know. And it kind of ties into the managed wealth and protecting people's or their store value is that it can only increase from here because of the way that the structure is set up. Real estate is a great example of it. But there's no shortage of looking around. Like everybody drives around and sees all the things for sale that they weren't for sale six months or 12 months ago. It goes back to the anecdotes. So we talked about is inflation or employment, but we could pick up the phone and talk to friends that aren't working anymore, even though they would tell you that, you know, employment was fine. Yeah, sort of fun tangent question for you guys based on that of I was talking with somebody recently about how the inflation numbers are not real, they're not realistic. And they posed to me like, so what is the best barometer for real inflation? I didn't really have a great answer, so I'm curious what you guys would point to. I ultimately said, and this feels right, that the best barometer is the rate of change of M2 money supply. that, you know, that may not, the rate of change may not show up for 18 months, 36 months, that whatever money is printed in a year that might not show up for some time as inflation. But the rate of change in a given year is drives inflation. so, you that has been averaging like 8 % a year for the last 15 years. So that, that I guess is what I point to as like, that's probably actual inflation is something like 8%. But but curious, Marty, Michael, Rich, what do you guys say I think nobody asked the question, but it's the real term inflation. thought experiment I would do is like, imagine you have a million bucks. What is the decay year over year? And I would say it's probably closer to 15 and it's going to accelerate to 20 % over the course of the next couple of years. And the decay is whether it's the house you want to buy, uh, the hotel, like anybody that travels hotels, like $500 a night, athletic minimum. Brian Cubellis (15:55.138) I think that's the way to measure it's like, is your purchasing power and reducing year over year if you pick a benchmark and you can get close enough because the phone gets cheaper. It's like what sailor talks about it being a vector. think it's just nuance. That's why most people miss it. Well, Jesse, to your point about M2 monetary expansion, that is one of my favorite quarterly interviews I do is with Matthew Mazinches who runs the numbers on the global monetary base and tries put Bitcoin in the position against other fiat currencies to see how Bitcoin is succeeding in becoming the world reserve currency and globally looking at the expansion of the monetary base. forget the time scale, but it's a multi -decade time scale. And I believe the stat is that monetary expansion on annual basis has been expanding by 13 .1%. My number was just US. So that would make sense. The 13 % global inflation. That's horrendous. Yeah. And I believe that's either going back to the 80s or the beginning of the 2000s. But again, it's a multi decade time horizon. So there's some some truth in that data. Another thing I would point to, I'm not sure if you guys saw, but I think just the basket of groceries is a good barometer. And that video I was floating around and that guy who re bought His grocery is on Walmart two years later and it was up like 425 % or something like that. Yeah, that's why I can't help but go back to the first principles because I know it's important to talk about money supply and depending on the institutions we're talking to explaining that. at end of the day, like to get to the very direct, like the amount of, I always think about what does Bitcoin do? lets you buy more bit more bitcoins. It lets you buy more eggs every week than less. And the dollar lets you buy less. Like that's the net of it. And that's what people can understand. That is the hardest being hit. Like everybody sees it and I think we're all fine, but it's still insane when you see the grocery bill and you're like, holy shit, what's going on here? Yeah. I think I over -exaggerate. I think it was like two and a half times was the, bill, not four and a half, still. it might've been three. I think it was high. was closer to four and a half than the two. was, it was pretty significant that, you're talking about the one where he re -bought on like, yeah. On Walmart, which is supposed to be the lowest cost producer, in the U Brian Cubellis (18:19.758) Yeah, but those money hungry grocery stores, that 1 % margin is... That's what people forget about grocery stores is that is not a business where they're marketing things up there. They're in severe competition with other grocery stores and they have a 1%, 2 % markup. That's it. That's all they can sustain and they just make their money by massive volume. Which is also insane because the only way that can exist is because you have a good form of money. The second the money breaks down, you can't coordinate that amount of economic activity to put all those things on the shelf. Like the grocery store in itself is a modern day wonder to have that many skews all figure out how to get there in one place and demand for it. And that starts to go away as we saw this, remember post COVID, we would text each other all the time is like, is it happening next? Cause you would just start having things missing from the store. And you forget, you're like, wait, this stuff doesn't just show up randomly. Like there's supply chains, there's involvement across the board. And as money starts not coordinating economic activity, flights start getting halted. The coffee shop's not there. It's like, this is only accelerating one way. Yeah. Have you guys ever noticed, you know, there was this old adage in the Trap By world You know, you go to a cocktail party and somebody is talking about the hot stock and there's always that momentum around it. But when you go to cocktail parties, I don't really go to cocktail parties, but you go to a social event or gathering, you know, it's not about it's not about Nvidia or, you know, what's a hot stock or what, you know, what's going on in crypto. It legitimately is a conversation about the inflationary pressures. is experiencing and I find it really, really interesting, kind of a social experiment, right? That you're flipping people from being enthusiastic and sharing things that they happen to be winning with or interested in or potentially exploring and the conversation is shifting to maybe some of the more painful things that people are experiencing and that tends to be Brian Cubellis (20:37.12) at least in my circles and i find it kind of an interesting little twist that inflation and the cost of groceries or or cost of energy whatever it may be seem to really be affecting mainstream and everyday conversations in such a way that you know i find absolutely fascinating that you know that the enthusiasm of growth is being outweighed by the pain that people are experiencing on a day -to -day basis. They're watching their discretionary incomes somewhat vanish in their ability to save or invest, disappearing from them along the way. it's a difficult situation for us to all be dealing with, but I find it the interesting conversation of the day, to be honest. I see that in my life too, anecdotally. It's not cocktail parties, but it's the mothers on the beach who do all the shopping. And they're just complaining about, my gosh, I can't believe what it's like going to the grocery store these days. that's such a profound observation there, Rich, that, you know, the psychology of our country, of our, of our world shifts from one of growth and optimism and planning for the future to defensiveness and fear and panic. about how do I maintain my quality of life when everything is getting more expensive around me. And that seeps into our politics, it seeps into our family structures, it changes everything about the discourse in our civilization. it reminds me of how you would expect the ratcheting up of panic to look like in decline of an empire like in Rome or something like that. And that the only panacea for it is to switch to a monetary standard where you start getting more every year for your money, a deflationary money like Bitcoin. And that, you know, it puts the it puts into context the stakes of what's at hand here. When when you're talking about Brian Cubellis (23:02.58) accelerating decay of fiat money because of all the circumstances around it. And the only lifeboat in the escape hatch is Bitcoin. But that escape hatch, that lifeboat makes your life better every year that you are there. It puts into sharp relief how important this technology is and how important getting out the message is so that we can shift the narrative and the mood, the overall climate back to the sort of mentality of growth and optimism for the future that we believe is fundamentally American. And we were sort of watching that slip away. I don't know, Marty, if you know who was behind the Thank God for Bitcoin video, but like that was a really cool trailer that came out because it showed it wasn't just white guys in America talking about Bitcoin. It's like everybody's impacted by this situation and buying Bitcoin supports and it just has a like anchoring point when everybody's saying the same thing. Because you're like, wait, all these people are crazy. Like what's happening here? And I think that's going to be a big like movie to get. I don't know. it documentary or movie? It's a documentary. Yeah. And I don't know if it's gonna be on Netflix or whatever, but it seems very highly produced. So I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up one of the big streaming platforms. Yeah, that'd be great. I think they're like about to release it for free or something. There was something about that. Not sure. But this provides a nice natural segue into the Bitcoin topical section of the show. Let's start off with bag fumble of the week. The German government has dumped more than 30 ,000 Bitcoin in the last seven days. Yeah, I think they started unloading on the 4th of July, which was probably pretty terrible timing on their part, but they had at one point, I believe, 49 ,000 some odd Bitcoin that they had seized from illegal operations. For some reason or another, they started dumping that Bitcoin in the middle of June. And in the last week, they have really accelerated the pace at which they're dumping Bitcoin, as I mentioned, selling more than 30 ,000 between July 4th and today. Brian Cubellis (25:30.098) Is the German government forsaking the future of their country? Unwittingly, yes, I guess they are. they, you know, everyone thinks that Bitcoin should be dropped like a hot potato and you should lock in your profits until you discover what Bitcoin really is and then you want to reverse course and drop the fiat money that you're holding and cemented into Bitcoin holdings. Yeah, I think it's just classic that nobody understands Bitcoin, especially not a government apparatus. And they will look back on this the way people look back on their missed opportunities to buy Bitcoin in 2012. This will just be one of those things that the German government, well, I The reality is that nobody will feel accountable for it by the time that they collectively realize they should have held on to this Bitcoin. It'll be like, oh, well, the people who were in power 10 years ago did that. It wasn't my fault. I'm not responsible. I'll point at the dead guy and say it's his fault. Yeah, exactly. Well, as Americans, we can't throw stones at glass houses. Our government has sold close to 200 ,000 Bitcoin since 2014. which is sad to see. It's really bullish, the amount of liquidity in the system and looking for Bitcoin that we've had all these dumps and we're sitting at basically 60K. Thank you, Michael. Another great segue. While that was happening, the ETFs had banner days earlier this week, believe 131 million flew into iBit alone in over two days, almost 450 million. And the stat that I saw floating out there is that one day performance by iBit was more successful than 90 % of the ETFs have been launched to date, meaning that that one day had more inflows than all the 90 % of the ETFs that launched this year, and that surpassed all their inflowing volume to date in just one day. And so it seems like smart money, which is outside the government, saw the dip and decided to opportunistically buy the dip. Brian Cubellis (27:54.862) We've been wondering what the market psychology will be for ETF buyers. And now we kind of have a bit of a track record, right? They piled in, they were classic reflexive upside buyers. When the market was running hot, $500 million a day was flowing in, chasing the rally. And then when things softened and started to go They were mild net outflows, which is sort of what you'd expect from typical human psychology and market participants. Basically, all that to say that the ETF buyers are people. But right now, it's great to see that the ETF buyers, basically baby boomers who are allocating through their portfolios, they are good at buying the dip. Baby boomers have been in markets for long enough to know to buy pain and the inflows that we're seeing into the various Bitcoin ETFs show that a good number of ETF buyers, aka baby boomers out there looking to allocate into Bitcoin, are viewing this as an opportunity to scale in. And that's great to see. And I think that helps It helps build confidence that future crashes will probably have more support on the downside as this new cohort of buyers steps in to buy. that's just a great thing for Bitcoin's diminishing volatility to the downside into the future. I'm actually very curious about this. It came up with a mutual friend when we were in New York about a lot of the buyers coming from hedge funds playing the basis trade. on futures versus spot. And Rich, I think we talked about this the first time you were on about your kind of instincts were to Jesse's point more of individuals and there's make no mistake, there's individuals buying Bitcoin. But curious after the conversations you've been having, do you feel like RAs and individuals are coming in through there or what's your take post, you know, a few months of having conversations with your network about exposure? Brian Cubellis (30:18.926) Because I've always just felt a little weird about the individual inflows into these ETF products, just basically because of anecdotal reference from being in this business, having networks out there that I haven't seen a lot of net new people from my own perspective step in. It's always been just like a little odd because I remember 2021, 2020 specifically, you would get the calls. Where do I buy? How do I buy? We didn't, we don't see a lot of that. I'm just curious. It's always been something that I've tried to like reconcile. You know, it's a fascinating thing to me, right? When you look at Bitcoin in many respects, one of the things that I would tell you is that I find absolutely shocking is just the grassroots nature of it, right? It's almost an inverted pyramid approach. It's less about, you know, Wall Street and banks, you know, kind of building products and you know, pushing them down, right? And then, you know, the banks in Wall Street are kind of considered, you know, the smart money. And then you've got, you know, the retail investor that's always been kind of considered or mocked as the dumb money and the contrarian indicator. And Bitcoin took the complete opposite path. And to me, I think it's absolutely shocking, you know, that you had this grassroots, you know, movement where you have individuals. who are doing the research on their own. They're understanding the technology and the innovation of what Bitcoin is. They're learning about blockchain and new companies. a second or parallel economy almost that's building up in many respects with Bitcoin and it's come from the grassroots and it's actually in my opinion about more of the smart and strong stable money and the hot holders and they're buying and they're holding and they're stacking. so I do think with the ETFs kind of coming out, I think you now have this next layer of Brian Cubellis (32:30.646) retail investors that are putting it in their portfolio because they are intimately aware of the effects of inflation and they can either look to gold, which is one potential solution or they can look to something like Bitcoin and I think that their appetite is to step into something potentially new and go along with Bitcoin and their retail investors are not dumb. they may be treated as dumb, they actually are the ones who are most affected. And they are also very aware that, know, while they may have been able to have, you know, market level returns over the last number of years, it hasn't really changed their situation in a material way. And so they're looking for ways to enhance overall return and find a better path forward for them and their families and their goals. And so the retail investor is, I think, a step ahead. the then the institutions in many respects and and part of that is the institutions are built on it on the structure of that you know doesn't necessarily support so that they are very interested in some respects you know but that being said it also can can potentially undermine what they've been able to build and and so you know how are they going participate and move into the space. think RIAs in particular are doing the research right now on the ETFs. know, were last month, I think it was Jackson who did some conversation around, you know, the early mover RIAs into the ETFs through the 13F bilings. And that was a, you know, that to me was a promising sign, even though it was a very small number. I think it was like, you know, 800 RIAs taking a position. You know, or just under, if I recall correctly, but that being said, you know, as a percentage, I thought it was a strikingly good percentage out of, you know, let's say 20 ,000 RIAs that might be out there. Broker dealers were slow, and I don't know that all of them have approved. Perhaps at this point in time, I think that there's a number that have not, and it's Brian Cubellis (34:52.556) reactionary base of it so they're taking unsolicited orders. That being said, in my recent conversations with RIAs, I know they're doing due diligence on the ETFs at their minimum, but they also have a fiduciary responsibility, right, to evaluate all types of products that are in the market. And that throws another complexity to it. How do How do you position into Bitcoin? Is that something that you have an investment thesis on? there are multiple ways that clients can, or RIAs can access on behalf of their clients. And they have to determine how to make that work from a compliance perspective, right? Their policies and procedures and how do they educate their advisors around, you whatever products that they've integrated and why they've integrated it. So there's more complexities that are kind of pushing into that space. And at the same point in time, custodians have to play well with them and create avenues for them to be able to position in. So Bitcoin has been fascinating just watching it come from a grassroots space. And it's just kind of flipped the story. of how financial products come to bear into the marketplace. And I've enjoyed watching the whole thing kind of flip on its side. man, this is a box. To that point, Rich, when you say flip on your side, do you think some of the people that you've been talking to are beginning to recognize that the career risk itself is flipping, where they don't help their clients get exposure to Bitcoin? in a couple of years, their clients could look back and see, say, what the hell were you doing when this was going on? Yeah, I've definitely had those conversations where, you know, there are firms that are saying, hey, look, you know, we've got a 15 year track record now on Bitcoin. And that track record is absolutely remarkable. If you, you know, you could sit there and say, well, look, that's a lot of volatility to introduce to my clients. But you can't deny Brian Cubellis (37:07.086) that 15 -year track record if a client brings it to you and says, Mike, why have we not been a part of this? Right? And I think that there is some of that, but it's not an overwhelming push because it's such a relationship -based business that people just come to really value the person that they are working with and trust the person that they are working with and they've gone through countless number of things together. And so, there's a pass. that has been given to a lot of financial advisors in many respects, right? There's not this overwhelming, wait a second, why are we not exposed to the top performing asset over the last 15 years whatsoever at any point in time? And to me, I think that that's a difficult question to have to answer to a client, right? You might say, well, geez, it's volatile or there's not enough liquidity or whatever. you're going to tell somebody, but the reality is, is I don't know that those arguments hold up as we kind of face the challenges that we spoke of earlier, right? That people are feeling a degree of pain or pessimism about things in general. So I do think that there are going to be firms that, you know, will continue to wait and, and, and, and I think that that's going to be a detriment to because eventually they're going to have to answer the question of what have we been doing here? How did you miss this boat? You have a 15 -year track record. And let's say Bitcoin has an aggressive move up post -having, and we all anticipate that. To miss that curve, I think, becomes a real dialogue that people are going to have. with their advisor around where they are and where they're positioned. And I think that there are firms that are at early phases, right? They're trying to get a Bitcoin thesis, let alone an investment philosophy and how to map it into their workflows and compliance and policies and procedures and educate their workforce. And so they kind of kind of move quickly, you know, to help kind of close that gap. But in my mind, I think it's a real... Brian Cubellis (39:34.318) I think it's a real threat, because we've been in challenging spaces where people have been a little bit more short -tempered around things, whether that be political or just because of their financial affairs being challenged with inflation. so my guess is that firms that are doing the work right developing a good due diligence process, looking for strategic partners to help them bolster the education, not only for their advisors, but for their end clients. think, you know, those ones are going to stand to win in the market, or win market share at a future day here. And Marty and Jesse, I think that's what's like basically bringing up the basis trade is more of a bullish statement that most people aren't here yet. Rich's statement on like emergent is across the board because it's emergent with RAs and pensions in the sense that it's the ones on the outer edges that are starting. like anecdotally, talked to one that said that from an SEC perspective, they were required. I don't know if this is by jurisdiction or how it was set up for this particular RA. They had to fill out like 10 pages of disclosures and a bunch of things they traditionally wouldn't have to do for a regular or any other asset that they had to. And the reason they even did it was because they had somebody internally that was the internal, you know, the advocate that was basically pounding the table saying, look, we need to get our clients exposure. They were willing to stick their necks out and spend the time to do this. But I think that that's a big, I feel personally, there's a, there's a misnomer of that. We have a bunch of net new capital coming in because the other side of it there is individual buyers buying in their personal accounts, but most wealth that we know or people know is managed by someone else. And those other advisors still need to get the green light to add it to their buy sheet. And so that's like this, that dynamic. And then the pensions on the other side, cause we talked to them and they're like, that's interesting. Swib did that thing. We're looking at it, but that's, you know, that's still crazy. We need more to come in. And so it's still so early, but it's positive in the sense Brian Cubellis (41:53.166) You know, we're pre -having, we hit the all -time high, which is kind of crazy from a structural perspective because it's usually taken anywhere between six to 12 months to get back to that from historicals. We've had all this dumping, if this is anywhere near correct, where people haven't really stepped in other than institutions because of the way that they can move capital around from a basis trade, like there's still so much demand coming. It just takes to the point Rich is sharing a lot of time and efforts from an education perspective. to basically say this isn't rat poison, this isn't snake oil, and there's different ways of custody that it won't go up in smoke based on what's happened the past 15 years, because that's a big part of this. Brian Cubellis (42:33.294) Yeah. But you know, it's interesting also, let me just kind of come piggyback on that because I think the the I really do think the the swib move and for those who are not familiar, right, we're talking about the Wisconsin pension and their allocation to to Bitcoin. I think that while it looks small as a relative size to what's what is It was a very, very interesting move. And I think it captured the attention of a lot of pension plans because we certainly have had more conversations internally with pensions on our side, looking for ways to potentially integrate Bitcoin, albeit early. But when Swib made that move, Swib's a huge pension in the United States. hundred what i think hundred seventy billion dollar pension plan and i think that they committed a hundred seventy million into into that point and while that percentage basis is very very small it will go on and said well okay that's a well -run pension plan i think they were correctly i'm wrong here michael jesse i think they were ninety nine percent and so it's it's certainly a well -run plan and it's a sizable plan and so they were in a position to to make a long -term investment decision you know with bitcoin in that situation but it you know that certainly puts pressure on pension plans that might be you know terribly underfunded and being in a position of maybe you know fifty -five seventy percent you know funding levels on their pension plan. I'm, I think it woke people up. It certainly is making them, you know, start mobilizing and they will develop, you know, really meaningful due diligence programs, you know, to evaluate the best way to enter Bitcoin and then more importantly, secure that Bitcoin for, the, those who, who stay on the benefit from the pension plan. Yeah. Something that will get everyone excited real quick. want to share with Jesse, cause I don't think, Brian Cubellis (44:57.198) I think Jesse might have seen this, but Marty, so we've had a lot of great people listen and reach out that work at pensions and we sent this news to some of them just to like catch back up. one of the, without, know, obviously naming the name, he basically, this is his excerpt that he sent, because this is just like a really important shot across anybody paying attention to this asset class. said, I see that Wisconsin is 23rd in terms of GDP, yet their gross pension size sits in the top 10 next to expected California, New York, Texas, Florida. So the takeaway for me was this, the state of Wisconsin has a well -funded pension system due to their long -term continued prudence of achieving sustainable investment results, while also appearing to have not been kneecapped by events such as the dot -com bubble or subprime mortgage bubble, resulting in them having more funds than other exponentially larger states. And this state, which is most likely has the greatest ratio of gross pension funds to GDP, is the only state to have made an allocation to Bitcoin. In other words, the most prudent state in the nation was the first to choose Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (45:58.146) That makes sense. we had congratulations to Wisconsin. I thought it was outstanding. And, know, just the testament that, you know, that they've got a really great group of people up there thinking about, you know, their responsibility to all the pensioners that they're investing on the album. Imagine the sand, imagine the sand to like be the first just to go out and do it. Like we talked to these guys and just like, just to just say like, look, this is what we're standing That's what it takes. I that's what you need to, they don't say risk it for the biscuit for no reason. It is a risky move by a pension of that caliber, but if it pays off, it's going to be a high upside for them, which gets to another topic that we want to talk about. I mean, it is this topic, which is the fact that we have an unfunded liabilities problem. not just here in the United States, but globally. And so Logan, if you want to pull up the TFTC link that I put in the chat, I wrote about this earlier this week and essentially the elephant in the room, unfunded liabilities. And for context, this is only government liabilities. And so this tweet was floating around last week about unfunded pensions. Major European countries are between 300 and 500 % of their GDP. And so there's a massive gap. in Europe and then if you scroll down Logan and you look at the unfunded liabilities here in the United States go up. We're sitting at 217 trillion at the federal level with Social Security making up 27 trillion, Medicare making up 41 .4 trillion. And to put that in context, the unfunded liabilities are more than 6 .2 times larger than our national debt as it stands right now. And if we were to attempt fill that gap by forcing American citizens individually to pay for it. It would cost each citizen $643 ,535. And these numbers have gone up since I wrote this article on Monday. this is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about is the unfunded liabilities that exist both at the government level and within these private pension systems that have massive gaps. Obviously, Wisconsin Brian Cubellis (48:24.736) is an outlier, you have states like Illinois, California, and others that have massive gaps that they need to make up. going back to what we were discussing earlier about these institutions warming up the Bitcoin, there's multiple ways to pitch it. One of the ways is to proclaim the benefits of Bitcoin, its properties, and why it's a good investment case. Another way is to flip the coin and look at the world outside of Bitcoin and say, Do you think this is a problem? And if so, how are we going to fix Yeah, Marty, first off, kudos on that piece that you wrote. think everybody ought to read it. It's a three to five minute read, but it's really, really outstanding because, you know, certainly in the conversations that I'm having, right, everybody's talking about inflation. They're talking about deficits and national debt, right? The $35 trillion, that's a conversation in every Right? Everybody's aware of that. And but nobody's talking about the unfunded liabilities and how how massive they really are. And then chasing it down. Right. What are the consequences of of that? Where does it eventually end? And and and those are pretty scary conversations. I you know, I I I would like to, you know, kind you know, pose this question, if there's advisors out there listening, you know, how do you have that conversation with clients? You know, how do you discuss not just, you know, inflation and how to how to try to maintain, you know, your portfolio and position it to take care of inflation, but, know, then, you know, pushing it into deficit and national debt conversations and then chasing it down one more layer, right, which is Brian Cubellis (50:22.816) unfunded liabilities that are existing, not only in the United States, that will cause some concerns for investors and have potential dire consequences in terms of lifestyle and or preservation of assets. If I'm an advisor, I know that one of my number one things that I'm entrusted with isn't just the relationship management, it's being entrusted with ensuring that this client you know, preserves their wealth and their capital, everything that they work for, right? That's something that is, you know, a common conversation in the planning and why, you know, advisors exist. you know, if you know that these, you know, looming concerns ultimately come to roost, how do you position? How do you protect that wealth for clients? What are you doing inside of your investment philosophy and... planning conversations that really help get a client to take the right steps and how do you facilitate that and what's your role? And so when I read that piece, I was like, man, that really is truly the elephant in the room. Nobody's discussing it. And I think that we need to have a national conversation around, not our deficit spending and our national debt, but the unfunded liabilities and how we solve these things. Yeah. And you look at the scale, it's like, how can you solve this? I don't think you can. think those off balance sheet liabilities, if you pull them onto the balance sheet, your debt to GDP is horrendous. It jumps from 130 % to, I don't even know what it would be, but 700%. Yeah, something. Brian Cubellis (52:24.376) You like you, you've, you're well past the event horizon being sucked into the black hole of what's possible to get out from. and, that's why they're off balance sheet because you, you, we've, I guess they cleverly did that, from the get -go to, to, make it look not so bad. and yeah, it, I remember looking at the, unfunded liabilities. four years ago and the number that I remember from then was 183 trillion. So, you know, your numbers Marty showed that that's jumped almost 40 trillion in four years. That rate of change is outrageous and impossible to recover from. The only option is to default on those obligations in some way. Well, And there's two routes default, you overtly default, which is politically untenable, where you just completely debase the currency, which is, I think we all believe the most likely outcome to, to quote unquote, solve this problem. Well, the thing that's scarier than that, that nobody talks about is even the funded liabilities are screwed. Like it's the same concept of 5 % or whatever the target yield advisors feel comfortable and giving their client from a risk free rate. That's not the real return. And so when they have to the quote unquote funded, when they have to go and give the pensioner or whoever it is, their money, let's call it three years from now, the 65 ,000, like what does that buy you? That's the funded. Like it's not the, the benchmarks aren't there from any respect of like, okay, so you're, um, I'm promising you X in the future state. talked about the structural problems. The only way to get out of it is You have to put more dollars in the system or it collapses. Like that's without question. I think we're all there. So even the real or the nominal like funded liabilities again, in a future state of IOU 65 ,000 or maybe it's 60 and then you include whatever CPI is. plus 2 .X percent that they measure. You're buying basically nothing at the time you get that if you're funded. Funded is obviously like crazy, but nobody even talks about the funded liabilities Brian Cubellis (54:43.214) On the micro example is like the advisor with a 5 % return. That's the natural thing that comes up if you talk to anybody that like has some wealth, their advisors putting them in. We talked with our guy from eBay, Mason. like, talked about their treasury has five different ways to make 5%. But like, that's not keeping you at par. That's probably keeping you still losing 10 % year over Brian Cubellis (55:09.134) Yeah. And it's just a hard thing. It's a hard thing to talk about because it's just like, wait, what are you saying? And it goes back to like what Jesse said about like, how do you measure inflation? It's like, well, if you have a million bucks or a hundred K, what does it buy you next year? And then the next year after that, that's how you can start to discern like, what is your hurdle rate? So you're not going backwards. And that's the big trick everybody's been played. It's like, oh, I get the 5 % instead of one. So I'm okay because it's a little more expensive, but nobody really does the math at the groceries and the event and the holiday. And then it's like, wait, I'm losing a bunch more money than I thought. And it's not until you're basically over levered in credit cards and you're missing your mortgages, which is happening, it's just not happening at the rate of the people we know. But it's only one direction until somebody says, I just need to like store in a better form of value. And this is also on the business side, which is really sad and crazy because you have deflationary tech like AI that's disrupting businesses and all the things happening coupled with inflation. And you're just kind of like, there's a lot of pain everywhere. Yeah. I know we said there's really only two ways to default overtly or via money printing, but rich to your point, like a national conversation. It's like, how do you even begin to have that? And what does that conversation look like? Is it, hey, millennials, Gen Z, you got to pay into this, but you're not going to get it up to this year. You pay into it up to this year. And you did your part to make sure that your parents and grandparents Had some form of comfortability in the later years of the life But you're on your own like and that's hard pill to swallow but if we're Being rational about the gravity of the situation the magnitude of the problem. It's probably got to be something like that Yeah, think it's like the classic arc of any Ponzi scheme really I had a finance professor 15 years ago Quite rightly, hammered into us, if you remember one thing from this class, remember that you won't get social security. Your generation won't get social security. He was making the distinction that the boomers are going to get social security because there's enough left in the system to make that happen. But at some point, it's impossible for the payouts to continue. Brian Cubellis (57:32.622) And we will have over promised and it just won't be possible anymore. then you'll you know, the Ponzi scheme falls apart. suddenly, you know, yesterday people were getting what they were promised. And then today they stop getting what they're promised. And that's how a Ponzi scheme falls apart. It's all all at once when it when it happens. And you know, one of a national conversation like no politician can ever bring this up and say, we seriously consider, we should seriously address the issue of these unfunded liabilities because one, the electorate has been conditioned to not even think about it. There's no financial sanity and rationalism out there in the discourse. so this is like bringing up, there's a meteor coming towards earth. you know, and it's going to destroy us all. let's talk about it. When when everybody's been told, don't don't worry about it. The meteor is not an issue. It's it's not going to be a problem at all. There is no meteor. Well, I would it's impossible. I would push back on that a little bit in the sense that I do think I do agree that the politicians are worried about it and it's the third rail, probably the largest third rail that they don't want to touch. But I think At least among my circle of friends and acquaintances in the millennial demographic, I think we're all pretty much in agreement. Like, yeah, we're never going to see social security. think people that are our age recognize that. And so like that opens up the opportunity for the conversation. like, all right, let's rip the bandaid off and have this conversation. We've got 30 more years of working in the economy so that we can pivot in. adopt a different plan to make sure that we can retire comfortably. I think the opportunity to have the conversation is pretty large considering the fact that I think millennials and Gen Z have already sort of written off that they're not going to get Social Security at the end of their life. Well, maybe we'll have that conversation when Nancy Pelosi stops getting re -elected. The electorate continues to be weighted towards the older generations Brian Cubellis (59:56.074) Once that shifts, maybe we start having a productive conversation. I just had a really awesome idea. What if like there's the politics and we'll hopefully figure that out whenever they're all gone. what if, no, seriously, like, I don't know what they're going to do, but what if like businesses that re like, we could do this where you employ somebody and then you effectively do a match instead of 401k, but it's BTC. And then you lock it for X. you basically require, it's a basically, it's a way to improve employee retention, but also take care of them like how it was supposed to be. And then you lock it for four, six, eight years, whatever. So the person has to stay with them to get the match. But even if they don't stay, they still own the money that they put after taxes or however it'd be managed. But it's this notion of like, you you talk about this a lot, man, where it's like, who's going to say what's like, we have to say ourselves and this idea of infusing was a practice that we led to the government. We can do it in the private sector and have people save because once we, everybody knows once people start stacking, like it only generally goes one direction because everybody starts looking at, well, why am I buying X when I could just, the purchasing power or the increasing growth. It's an interesting thing that could like, I know it'll happen because it makes too much sense. Brian Cubellis (01:01:17.484) Yeah, it raises, mean, it's a total shame that Bitcoin is the perfect pension asset and pensions do not are not prepared to accept that or recognize that or seize that opportunity. But, you know, pensions are either defined benefit or defined contribution. And the big problem with unfunded liabilities is we have all these defined benefit plans where it's, you know, the government has made promises about here's the quality of life that we will ensure in your retirement. no matter what that costs at the time that that happens, defined benefits. And that cost keeps ballooning as everything gets more more expensive. But with Bitcoin, you could do like a defined contribution. This what you're talking about here, Michael, like we will put in sats in this regular scheduled plan. And purchasing power stored in Bitcoin will grow over time. And then when you retire, you will get to collect based on whatever that has become. Yeah, and we match them. would be a perfect pension asset. Yeah, and you match because ultimately you're doing two things. If you care about your employees, you want them to have a better quality of life. So them seeing their balance increase means that they're better. But then ultimately everybody knows churn. is costly. So if you have them satisfied and you increase the relationship from like matching and you just structure it the right way, it's a win all around. even if it comes out a little bit more from a, you know, year over year basis over the long enough timeframe, you're going to like have that, that employee longer, which is historically the opposite of what happens right now. Everybody just kind of like jumps around. looking for the marginal five, you know, percent year over year pay bump, or they're not fulfilled. But if you can match the happiness at the employment coupled with the long term, where I think, I don't know this, but I know that it existed where somebody worked at, you know, Ford or whatever they worked their whole life and they got their pension. Like you can start to bring that back versus kind of where we're at today. Marty, this is actually randomly timely because our friend, you can probably describe it better, but that, that, that tweet with Cardone about this whole thing about the 401k just being effective, like a giant Ponzi. Yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:03:42.478) Not only that, but people who are piling into 401k is completely misunderstanding the tax ramifications of the 401k in terms of not understanding. They think it's like a tax free vehicle, which it is on the way in and on the way out. You have to book that, that what you cash out as income and pay taxes on it. And you look at capital up and it's buying you much less than what you thought 30 years later, which is the whole point. Like it's supposed to do the opposite. Yeah. Yeah, and so the opportunity cost of funneling into a 401k that's funneling into all these assets, they're losing purchasing power over time against Bitcoin. And that's a very steep opportunity cost over a 30 year Brian Cubellis (01:04:31.352) Sounds like somebody should do this. Sounds like we're starting the conversation now. Again, they're not going to save you. We're going to save ourselves. So we're starting the conversation here on the last trade. And I expect it to pick up from here. This is, yeah. Let me ask you guys. I mean, I know that the whole theme of this feels a little dark, right? Because we're talking about substantial problems in the world. you know, While that is the case, right? I know each of you are just tremendously optimistic about the future. And it's largely, that's that beautiful thing about Bitcoin. think that if you didn't have something like Bitcoin out there, you still feel the same level of optimism? Not a chance. I'm an incredibly optimistic person about the future. I've always been that way. I believe in positive steps and progress and I love to see innovation and things that push our fellow man to new limits. I've always felt that at the core. I've had that American spirit, the American opportunity and at the same point in time, if you were to look at what we're talking about today, and not just in the United States, but around the world, it would be very easy to have a sense of hopelessness, right? And to be paralyzed to inactivity and not to look at what are the things that we can do that are within our control. And I find that when I'm talking to people is they're like, how can you be so optimistic when you're watching the absurdities of the world today and the challenges that we face, whether that be with wars and sprouting up all over the world, frankly, or if you're looking at unfunded liabilities or national debts or collapsing currencies Brian Cubellis (01:06:50.382) or, you know, censorship or all of these bigger issues, right? I think people get a little bit fatigued and down, but, you know, I remain optimistic. And the reason, the whole reason why, to be perfectly honest, is I can take actionable steps. There is an escape route. And so, you know, while this call just, you know, is hitting on some really really challenging conversations. And I'd love to see more and more of them, to be honest. You know, I think we all, we all probably feel pretty optimistic about, you know, what can happen and what we're capable of doing because we see a pathway. Absolutely. I mean, thank God for Bitcoin. Without Bitcoin, I think it is bleak out there. And I think a big part of that is because we've all bought into this notion that life gets better every successive generation, like the quality of life should be improving. That's kind of the American promise that has delivered for the last few hundred years of you will live better than your parents did. And that's because of technological progress and capitalism making things better over And for the millennials, it's a rug pull because the baby boomers lived very well. And a big part of that was by racking up debt. So they were living beyond their means. And then that bill is coming due. millennials and Gen Z and the generations after are looking at a future where their quality of life, their standard of living will be worse than their parents. And that is a blemish on the American social contract. And it feels bleak out there because everyone's searching for how do I make my life better? How do I deliver on the promise that we were told when we were growing up that life will keep getting better? And Brian Cubellis (01:09:11.138) the circumstances of life keep getting harder and harder and harder. And so the gap between that expectation and the reality continues to grow for the younger generations. And that's so discouraging. so the amount of despair that that creates is remarkable. And then there's Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is the way out of that, the way to create a better life by storing your purchasing power in a savings technology that grows in value over time. and is a tailwind that helps lift you out of the headwinds that our society is facing. I come back to the pensions aren't ready for Bitcoin, but individuals can be ready for Bitcoin. And the reality of it is you have to be your own pension. Social security isn't going to be there for you when you retire, if you're a young person. So you have to take control of financial destiny and save in Bitcoin if you can today and be your own pension because nobody's going to be there for you probably to provide the kind of promises that have existed in the past. So it's up to the individual to, you know, manifest their own destiny. Brian Cubellis (01:10:33.358) We can do it. I think we're starting the conversation here. It's important. We can't wait on the politicians to start it. We got to start it ourselves. I think, again, really anchoring to let's have it now while older millennials have 20 years left to work, ourselves 30 years, hopefully less, Gen Z 40, 50 years. And let's just rip the bandaid off and have these hard conversations because It's the elephant in the room. It's the stereotypical head in the sand conversation that nobody wants to have. it's like, you're looking at a wall of $217 trillion of unfunded liabilities just on the federal side. it's like, that is a massive problem. It's like, isn't that one of your estimations for the total value of global assets? Isn't it somewhere in that range? Yeah. pegged it at 900 trillion, but yeah, you're talking about a material percentage of more than a quarter. Yeah. The, the one, the one thing, um, rich, like I know you called out kind of some of the things we talked about. think we probably talk about a lot of the, maybe don't talk about a lot of the negative, but it's, would call it out. It needs to be jarring, right? And people get like lulled to sleep and a lot of these things and before it's too late. So I think that's where we highlight it. But I What everybody shared here is we're insanely hopeful and excited because like you're a great example of this. Not to put you on the spot, but somebody that spent their whole career dedicated to this altruistic version. This is when our conversation started of helping individuals preserve their wealth and Schwab is at the pinnacle, was at the pinnacle of that. But things change and technology gets introduced. And if people don't move, then people have to move. and they have to support and when people have to stay principled The most bullish thing I've seen that, know, Jesse and I building this business or just involved in it. know Marty sees this all the time is you cannot lose if the best minds are working on something. And that's effectively what is happening year over year. And you coming from all that experience coming into this ecosystem to help to the point, bridge that gap and educate is how we get there and how we get far. and so like, can't do it without individuals like you and without bridging the gap, which doesn't get talked about enough. Brian Cubellis (01:12:55.298) But it's also the positive side of this is like, we're gonna make it. A lot of people don't like to say like, this is inevitable. It's like, you almost have to say it's inevitable because you burn anything behind it. And you're like, look, we have to win. We have to make it successful. People don't like to go and say that route because then it means that like, we're not going to try. But I think about it the other way. It's like, this has to work. So you put everything out there. And this is effectively what you're doing what we're doing here. And because it matters that much. And people respect that because when you stick your neck out, then they're like, okay, well, I should listen. And that's the point of kind of sharing both sides of it. There's positive and negative. But at the end of this day, like we're all positive here on where we're gonna Brian Cubellis (01:13:31.854) think that is a beautiful note. 10 this conversation on gentlemen, I was take a two week break, we get back we're firing in all cylinders of the great conversation coming hot. It's just heating it's just getting warmed up. Rich, thank you for joining us. Thank you for your insights. Yeah. Unless anybody has parting thoughts. Well, hey, I'll just I'll plug your article one more It really, I gotta tell you, it's really the conversation that's missing right now. And it's titled appropriately and it's a really, a really good read and ask some thoughtful questions. At least as I was reading it, I was just like, boom, boom, boom, right? And there were so many things that I thought were really fascinating in that. And it's worthy of all of us to take time to seek that out. I'll repost it on my LinkedIn to make sure. that you can see, but it's really good. Wanna plug a few things, Nashville coming out, Marty's, I think there's still tickets for Hot Cell takeover. Pubkey .bar slash R -H -R. Pubkey .bar slash R -H -R. Onramp is gonna be in full force too. We'll have a bunch of stuff on our Twitter. And then Rich and Mark Connors have a new show coming up next week, The Wake Up Call. Rich, do wanna share a about it and that you are Gen X, not, Gen X, right? You got in trouble in a meeting. Yeah, when I say mean stuff about the Boomers, it's not about Rich. That's right, I'm not a boomer, I'm Gen X. I want to make sure everybody understands that, but no, no, no. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, to be honest with you. Wake Up Call is a collaboration with Mark Connors who worked with three IQ, Credit Suisse, other folks, and he's a global macro guy. And he's just a, he's a hoot. He's an enjoyable person to listen to, to talk to. He has tremendous perspectives that I think add value in the institutional space. You know, not only institutional, obviously, you know, I think a retail investor would certainly benefit from his insights and, and, Brian Cubellis (01:15:55.554) things that he brings to the table. But that being said, we're going to kind of chop it up and talk largely to intermediaries, people that are advisors and family offices, whatever it might be, pension plans that they want to join, they're welcome to. But our goal is to really kind of talk a little bit about the threats and opportunities that are presented with Bitcoin in coming and way that it has a growing humidity has and how do you think about you know capitalizing on those opportunities that are there. I think that there's plenty of spaces for for custodians and and and our A's to win. I think they just need to figure out their path and build the competencies in order to to support a Bitcoin world. And so we'll talk about the opportunistic side. in the intermediary space, but we'll also discuss what are the challenges, right? What are the risks that you face if you don't develop a thesis in this space? And, you know, one of the biggest pieces, right, is every firm is looking to be the trusted advisor to their clients and they care deeply. They care deeply about their clients. So if that is the case, you know, what's your stance and how are you, you preparing your clients for potentially difficult times and how do you bring Bitcoin forward because as Bitcoin continues to grow in price and adoption in the retail space, if you're not there, then clients are going to seek out somebody that does have a point of view and answers in terms of how to kind of move forward. So my goal with this is to really kind of speak to. opportunities and threats and, and, and build that ecosystem inside of every single firm out there. can go as far as saying that they need a wake up call. They need a wake up call. We all did. We all did. Some of us get it sooner than others. That's Brian Cubellis (01:18:08.726) Not sure if you can hear it, but the kids in this house are on their way back from mascot school at the beach. So before the background noise gets too crazy here, I want to thank you gentlemen. It was a great conversation and we'll do it again next week. Thanks, Marty. Thanks, guys. Have a good one. See you guys.